Thoughts on my career

When I was still in uni, I wanted to be a career woman and better still, someone who can balance work and home life well enough. I believe in my ability to do that. However, after working for about 2 years plus, my thinking seems to have changed. I suddenly don’t feel like working and would rather stay at home. Or I can still work but in a no- brainer job with regular stable hours and a fat paycheck. That sounds really nice.

I do think I have a good job now, with very regular stable hours, a job that requires not much use of my brains (not as much as studying or analyzing though) and quite a fat paycheck. Though the pay can be much better but with my lack of experience, I do think the paycheck is sufficient. Anyway, God tells us to be contented and I am with the money, at the moment. Haha. Also, I realized how precious working regular hours is and that there is no need to stay back late. It’s great to go home, have dinner, laze around and relax.

The only things I dislike about my job are that I need not use my brains and the lack of interaction. I guess I always wanted to feel at home in my workplace, such that I work in a place I can call my work “home”, with people I can relate to, with people who are open-minded and close-knit. This is the only thing that is lacking now. Perhaps the “grass is greener on the other side” syndrome is setting in.

Comparatively, my previous pay was quite low and the working hours longer. I remembered I used to complain a lot about other colleagues who don’t do their jobs well or use PR to their advantage or just normal complaining. Now I don’t. Which is a relief, because I realized all that complaining zapped a lot of energy from me and most of my colleagues were in the same situation too. That happens when the company is extremely big, I guess. However, it is also in a big/ bigger than mine current company where you get the “homely” feeling and the camaraderie, close-knit feeling because of the common activities like company/ department/ section dinners or award ceremonies or even annual report briefings, training courses or even self-organised activities. I used to think that people didn’t matter, only what you want in your career. Now I know that the people you work with, plays an extremely important factor in making your worklife miserable or pleasant. At least for me, that is.

Or perhaps it’s just the people and culture in my company. Perhaps I never really got over it and adapted here. People here do their own work, do their own stuff and never bother about others. They don’t even lunch together. They stand on the left and right side in the lift and never intruding into each other’s space, even if they knew each other. That’s weird. Perhaps there are too many foreigners (70% ang mohs, some indies, japs, koreans, etc) that a common identity is never existent.

Perhaps I should do other stuff during my lunch-time and use it effectively to settle my personal things like paying bills, checking up on something, buying things, etc. Or perhaps one day I will find something very suited to my liking in terms of the job scope, pay, people and company values. Perhaps then I will stay long term and really develop my career.